[Henry] was a good boy, maybe a little [more] mischievous at times than the rest of us with a little more nerve.1
—LOUIS ABRAHAM
AFTER A YEAR in Silver City, everything for the Antrim family seemed to be “ace high,” as a stud poker player on a lucky streak at the Orleans Club would have put it. They were a long way from wallowing in silver dollars, but at least they had a roof over their heads, some wages coming in, and Catherine’s tuberculosis appeared at this high, dry altitude to have stabilized for the time being.
Best of all, as far as Catherine was concerned, both her boys, far away from the outlaws and juvenile delinquents in Wichita, were in school studying arithmetic, geography, grammar, and penmanship under the tutelage of Dr. Webster. She also had to be proud of Henry’s evident aptitude for learning a foreign language and peppering his conversation with Spanish words and phrases. Unlike other Anglos who referred to all Hispanics as greasers, a derogatory label that had originated in Texas, Henry was drawn to the Hispanic culture and people. He fancied their spicy food, their style of dress, and especially their music.2
It did not take long before townfolk took notice of Henry Antrim. In later years, when asked what they remembered about the boy, most of those acquainted with him seemed to appreciate his better qualities rather than dwell on any deficiency of character. On the basis of a composite description of Henry from several of his boyhood friends, historian Jerry Weddle wrote:
He was unfailingly courteous, especially to the ladies. Like his mother, he was a spirited singer and dancer. He had an alert mind and could come up with a snappy proverb for every occasion. He read well and wrote better than most adults. A taste for sweets resulted in bad teeth, and two of his upper incisors protruded slightly. His rambunctious sense of humor always got a laugh, whether it be about himself or someone else. Because of his small stature, he took a lot of ribbing from those bigger and stronger, but what he lacked in size he made up [for] with tremendous energy and quick reflexes. Anxious to please, willing to take extraordinary risks, Billy [Henry] would dare anything to prove his worth. The other school kids soon realized that he had genuine courage.3
Long after Henry had become forever known as Billy the Kid and Josie was living out his life in obscurity, some of those classmates recalled the Antrim brothers with affection. “I know he [Henry] was a better boy than I was,” Anthony Connor recollected. “He was very slender. He was undersized and really girlish looking. I don’t think he weighed over 75 pounds.”4 Another boyhood chum, Chauncey Truesdell, said that neither Antrim brother was very big but that “Henry was only a small boy, small for his age.” Chauncey recalled that of the pair, Joe was “larger and very husky” and “looked to be a year and half or two older than Henry,” and that was why Joe sat at the back of the classroom with the older, more advanced pupils, while Henry “sat near the front with us younger ones.”5 Even the children of the local sheriff remembered Henry favorably. “My sister and I went to school with Billy the Kid,” reminisced Harry Whitehill when he was elderly. “He wasn’t a bad fellow.”6
On the whole, the town’s lads were routinely mischievous but no more troublesome than other boys in similar circumstances. Of course not everyone agreed. Among those who kept a wary eye on local youths and carefully monitored their deportment was the newspaper editor Owen L. Scott. In his early thirties about the time Henry and his friends were prowling the streets, the Virginia native had only recently become the editor of Mining Life. He and his young wife moved to Silver City from Fort Selden, a territorial army post on the Rio Grande, built to protect settlers and travelers of the Mesilla Valley and San Augustin Pass from outlaws and marauding Gila and Mescalero Apaches. Scott was working as a government clerk at Fort Selden when he decided to try his hand at journalism.7
In Silver City, Scott soon earned a reputation for churning out persuasive yet often cantankerous editorials about various aspects of town life, in particular the lack of good public education and the need for a proper public school to corral the local kids. He dubbed them village arabs, a term much like street arabs, which was used in cities back East for vagabond children or homeless urchins who lived by their wits on the streets.8 Disparaging names were nothing new to Henry. A few years earlier the newspaper editor in Wichita had called Henry a street gamin when the family resided there.9
“In the race of life, we know of a few boys in town who would benefit by coming in on the home stretch across the maternal knee,” Scott wrote in one of his officious editorials. In an earlier column he stressed the need for the children to receive what he called “a real American education” because they were growing up “in idleness without an opportunity to improve their minds.”10
Scott never published names of any specific village arabs, but he began associating the need for a public school with the need for a more substantial jail. When a sneak thief made off with thirty-five dollars from the cash drawer at Richard Knight’s butcher shop, the newspaper advised: “It will pay to keep a good look out for these petty thieves now, as there are a number of them in town and they don’t let any chance slip.” On the same page another story noted that “the good attendance of children has been secured” for the Sunday school, perhaps a subtle hint for recalcitrant arabs.11
On March 28, 1874, when Dr. Webster dismissed classes and the school term ended, Mining Life recommended staging a series of amateur theatricals instead of allowing the students to grow idle and get into more trouble. According to the newspaper, the children could participate in the dramas and at the same time help raise funds to construct a schoolhouse. It was thought that morality plays would be the most appropriate fare for the village arabs.
One of the suggested plays was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, already regarded as the most influential novel of the nineteenth century. Another was Ten Nights in a Barroom, a tearjerker temperance melodrama that gave audiences a vicarious glimpse of alcohol-induced wickedness.12 Apparently no one raised the point that it really was not necessary to stage a play to reveal the adverse impact of liquor on the population. All anyone had to do was stroll past the saloons and whiskey mills lining the streets and witness up close the abysmal results of too much potent red-eye or mescal.
The reality of life in the mining town aside, other responsible parties must have agreed with the newspaper’s proposal, for minstrel shows and sentimental melodramas were soon being staged at dance halls and meeting rooms around Silver City. Several of the arabs participated, and one of the most enthusiastic of them was Henry Antrim. No reviews of his performances survived, but fortunately his cohort Harry Whitehill furnished a glimpse of the troupe’s shenanigans. In an interview, Whitehill described an episode that transpired just after runoff from torrential rains and snowmelt tore down the hillsides into arroyos, causing one of the town’s periodic floods:
I was what you call the property man. Well, some of us boys were walking down to Bailey’s Drug Store on the other side of the old saloon. Billy the Kid was right behind me. He gave me a shove and I turned around and cussed him; and Billy gave me another shove and I went down in the flood. Well, I would have been drowned right there if two men hadn’t come out of the Post Office just then and saved me.
That night we went over there to give the minstrel. Billy was the Head Man in the show. When he came around to me I said, “I want you to pay me what you owe me.” And Billy said he wasn’t going to. “Well, if you don’t I am going to tear this show up,” I said. But Billy wouldn’t give me a thing, so I went through a curtain and pulled it after me, you know. Later I happened to meet him but [Charley] Stevens kept him from beating me up.13
It was well known that Henry enjoyed singing. Perhaps one of his favorite songs, “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” was included in the boy minstrel’s repertoire. The popular tune had long become a standard of the minstrel form, especially among the professional companies touring the West as well as with amateurs attempting to entertain the hometown folks.
Henry’s appreciation of song and dance came from his mother, and when her health allowed it, Catherine and her spirited son regularly attended the bailes. Public dances were held several nights each week at halls that usually adjoined saloons such as the social hops at McGary’s Hall, the establishment that had served as the town’s first courtroom and church on North Main. At Ward’s Hall, only men were permitted to use the front door for easy access to gaming tables and the bar. Respectable ladies, such as Catherine Antrim, who had a hankering to dance had to go to the alley at the rear of the building and enter through double barn doors that opened onto a spacious dance floor, two hundred feet long and fifty feet wide.14 Many townspeople turned out for the dances, some of which lasted until the wee hours.
Public bailes were also held in the Hispanic neighborhoods of Silver City, just as they were in villages throughout New Mexico Territory. Often these balls took place in a large sala, a reception room, where several cotillions—elaborate ballroom dances with frequent changing of partners—occurred at the same time.15 Other popular dances included the vals (waltz), chotiz (schottische), polca (polka), and an assortment of regional dances found only in Nuevo México.
Musicians with violins, harps, guitars, horns, and sometimes an Indian tombe, or drum, played from a raised platform, and spectators took seats on both sides of the sala. Without fail, mothers or older female relatives accompanied young señoritas who came to the dances, hoping to enchant their dance partners. The chaperones quietly visited with one another on the sidelines, but their sharp eyes never left their charges twirling on the crowded floor.16
For amusement, some dancers still observed an old custom of filling hollowed eggshells with cologne water, which they broke over the heads of their friends as a matter of sport.17 If Catherine and her musical son ever made it to one of the bailes on Chihuahua Hill—and given his love of the Hispanic culture, those chances are quite good—perhaps the young man with agile dancing feet experienced a burst of sweet liquid streaming down his smooth cheeks.
Back at the Americano shindigs, couples danced to some of Henry’s favorite tunes such as “The Arkansas Traveler,” “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” and “The Irish Washerwoman.” Still, the dance tune that he loved the best remained “Turkey in the Straw,” and he frequently requested it whether he was doing the jig with a young lady or his mama. “Mrs. Bill Antrim was a jolly Irish lady, full of life, and her fun and mischief,” recalled Louis Abraham. “Mrs. Antrim could dance the Highland Fling as well as the best of dancers.”18
Unfortunately Catherine’s dancing days were drawing to a close. By the spring of 1874 the tuberculosis that seemed to be under control had resurfaced with a fury. Acrid fumes pouring from the smelter furnaces formed a canopy over the town. Every day Catherine’s hacking, dry cough grew worse as she inhaled more of the smoky poison into her failing lungs. In a desperate effort to ward off the inevitable, Catherine made the journey to a lush high-desert oasis just twenty-six miles southeast of Silver City.19
For centuries the natural hot springs there had lured various Indian tribes, Spanish explorers, stagecoach travelers, soldiers, miners, and others seeking relief in the miraculous healing waters. Through the years the site had had many names such as Ojo Toro, or bull spring, because large numbers of wild bulls came there to drink daily; Ojo Caliente, or hot spring; and by the 1870s Mimbres Hot Springs, from the Spanish word for willows. Only in 1878–1879, after Colonel Richard Hudson acquired the property, did it become Hudson’s Hot Springs.20
Besides their therapeutic qualities, those who camped there found other uses for the hot springs. Cooking fires were not necessary since a dressed rabbit, stuffed with bacon and seasoned with salt, could be submerged for a short time and cooked to perfection. Some said the water was hot enough to brew coffee and tea. There was even a cockeyed commercial scheme that was likely inspired by whiskey and not a soak in the sulfur waters. The fellow who thought it up suggested the organizing of the Toro Soup Company, arguing that “it would be such an easy matter to throw in some cattle and pipe the soup out over the plains.” Alas, just days later the hapless gent was found dead of thirst on the southern plains.21
Richard Hudson first visited the hot springs in 1870 to seek relief from gout. His recovery was so remarkable he decided to purchase the property and open it to others suffering from various ailments, including consumption. His wife, Mary Stevens Hudson, became one of Catherine’s friends and took a personal interest in her treatment.22 “She [Catherine] was a sweet gentle little lady,” recalled Mary Hudson, “as fond of her boys as any mother should be.”23
Regrettably the baths could not restore Catherine’s lungs. By May 1874 she was confined to her bed in the small cabin on Main Street in Silver City. At least she had some peace of mind as she took to her sickbed, knowing that her sons were back in the classroom. On May 18 a new teacher took the teaching reins from Dr. Webster. Known to history only as Mrs. Pratt, the schoolmarm began a summer school session after some of the pupils, including Henry and Josie, had helped repair the adobe building’s roof and whitewashed the walls. Unfortunately the school term was cut short when the annual deluge of August rains reduced the layer of dirt on the flat roof to a pool of mud and the weight caused the ceiling to come tumbling down on the students. School was promptly dismissed, and Mrs. Pratt left town never to return.24
It was apparent to Catherine’s family and friends by then that she was in the final stages of her battle with consumption. Remarkably, it was at that critical juncture that William Antrim began spending even more time away from home on his prospecting trips. With their mother incapacitated and their stepfather gone most of the time, the Antrim brothers had little means of support. They also had no real adult supervision.
Right about this time Henry Antrim, dancing on the boundary that separates the lawful and the lawless, took his first step just over that very thin line. “Well, the first thing he [Henry] done, he tried to get an uncle of mine named Charlie Stevens to go in with him and rob a little peanut and candy stand an old fellow named Matt Devershire [Derbyshire] had,” said Wayne Whitehill.25
The loot Henry sought was a display of costume jewelry in Derbyshire’s store window that was to be raffled off by a Mexican circus passing through town. According to Wayne Whitehill, Henry and Charlie Stevens planned to break into the store, swipe the jewelry, and then hightail it to Mexico and dispose of their ill-gotten booty. On the eve of the burglary Charlie got cold feet and told his father, Isaac Stevens, about the plot. The angry father marched the boy directly to Derbyshire, and Charlie told the men that Henry “had me hypnotized.”26
Stevens and Derbyshire tracked down Henry and gave both boys a thorough scolding. So that Charlie would not be labeled a squealer and become a target for Henry’s revenge, the men said they learned about the burglary scheme from an old drunk who overheard the boys talking about their nefarious plans and reported it.27 Following the thwarted burglary, a chastised and supposedly contrite Henry stayed on the straight and narrow for a while and tried to behave himself. Still, his mother grew more worried as well as angry. Perhaps this was the incident she found so disturbing she warned her son that if he took up a life of crime, “You’ll hang before you’re 21.”28
Catherine’s health quickly deteriorated. The disease consumed her lungs, and her body wasted away as she continually hacked up bloody sputum and bravely endured excruciating pain. With Bill Antrim mostly away, the two boys needed help in caring for their mother and themselves. Luckily for the family, Clara Louisa Truesdell, the mother of Henry’s pal Chauncey, had graduated from nursing school in Chicago. She dutifully came to the Antrim cabin and tended to Catherine’s needs for several months.29 “When Mrs. Antrim was sick, she was worried about Joe and Henry, and she made my mother promise to look out for them if anything should happen to her,” recalled Chauncey.30
Near the end, Catherine made another plea for Clara Truesdell’s help. “When she was dying she said she was leaving two boys in a wild country and asked my mother if she would try to help them,” said Chauncey. Clara promised Catherine that she would do her best to see after the boys. On Wednesday, September 16, 1874, Catherine Antrim took her last gasping breath, and her fevered life ended. She had lived to be forty-five years of age. She died in her own bed surrounded by her sons, Henry and Joseph, and Clara Truesdell. William Antrim was still gone, searching for riches that he never did find. He was not back in time for his wife’s funeral, which took place the next afternoon at two at the family cabin.31
Clara Truesdell prepared Catherine for the ceremony. She washed the body, combed the hair, and dressed the dead woman in the best gown she owned. Besides Catherine’s sons, members of the Truesdell, Stevens, and Whitehill families attended the simple service. Young Louis Abraham helped Henry and Josie dig their mother’s grave in the town’s burying ground. A coffin was built, and they made a wooden headboard to mark the place. “There was not a hearse in Silver City then so my father’s Surry [sic] was used to carry the body to the cemetery,” said Louis. “Billie [sic] and I as well, soon learned we had lost a dear ally and friend, as well as his mother. I have often been thankful that she never had to know of the trouble Billie [sic] became involved in for it would have broken her heart. How thankful I am to know that that good woman never had to face that heartache.”32
On September 19 a notice of Catherine’s death appeared in the newspaper. Of the three obituaries posted for that week, Catherine, at age forty-five, was the eldest. The other two, a miner and a married woman, were thirty-five.
Henry was just fourteen when his mother died. After she passed away, the two boys undoubtedly felt alienated and alone. For Henry, this loss was especially devastating. Without the parent he most loved and respected, Henry soon returned to his dance on that invisible line between the lawful and the lawless. It was a dance that proved to be a complete tragedy.
Darling, I am growing old,
Silver Threads Among the Gold,
Shine upon my brow today,
Life is fading fast away;
But my darling you will be, will be,
Always young and fair to me,
Yes, my darling you will be,
Always young and fair to me.33